Back to the gym; scansion

Having not been to the gym in about a fortnight, I discovered after I got there that I didn't have my combination lock with me. I didn't want to buy yet another, so I schlepped my pack with me, which is both less fun and something the gym doesn't really like. It would have been a minimal workout anyway, though, because I was squeezing it in after work:

( numbers, as usual )

Meanwhile, reading the subway-provided excerpt from Yeats again, I realized that it isn't actually in iambic pentameter, no matter how I try to force it. Or rather, some lines are, but not all: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold" is iambs, but I cannot make "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" fit into ten syllables, and "Turning and turning in the widening gyre" is only iambic pentameter if I pronounce "widening" with the "e" silent, as "wide-ning" instead of "wide-en-ing" (which may be how Yeats would have said it). It doesn't rhyme either, but that's less startling.

Have I been confused all these years, or is this just the difference between New York dialect of today and Irish of a century ago?

Also seen on the subway: "War is Peace: Bush/Orwell 2004".

Back to the gym; scansion

Having not been to the gym in about a fortnight, I discovered after I got there that I didn't have my combination lock with me. I didn't want to buy yet another, so I schlepped my pack with me, which is both less fun and something the gym doesn't really like. It would have been a minimal workout anyway, though, because I was squeezing it in after work:

( numbers, as usual )

Meanwhile, reading the subway-provided excerpt from Yeats again, I realized that it isn't actually in iambic pentameter, no matter how I try to force it. Or rather, some lines are, but not all: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold" is iambs, but I cannot make "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" fit into ten syllables, and "Turning and turning in the widening gyre" is only iambic pentameter if I pronounce "widening" with the "e" silent, as "wide-ning" instead of "wide-en-ing" (which may be how Yeats would have said it). It doesn't rhyme either, but that's less startling.

Have I been confused all these years, or is this just the difference between New York dialect of today and Irish of a century ago?

Also seen on the subway: "War is Peace: Bush/Orwell 2004".